The Viking Wars of Alfred the Great

Preface

That the ships lay there I had curious evidence some years ago. An old gentlemen, to whose politeness I am indebted told me that when the railway bridge across the fleet was being built, the navvies came upon many ships deep in the mud, several of which on exposure had evidently been burnt, as their charred remains showed. Indeed, about them lay numerous skeletons.

F.C.J. Spurrell

These are the words of enthusiastic archaeologist Flaxman Charles John Spurrell, who set out in 1879 to document what he could of the remains of a Viking camp at Shoeburyness in Essex. Spurrell was attempting to record for posterity the encampment of Hæsten, the great marauding Dane who invaded King Alfred the Great’s (871–899) kingdom in the 890s, after years of successful campaigns abroad. As we shall see, what happened to Hæsten and his followers was markedly different from the fate of those Danes who had earlier infested the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex and nearly brought it to its knees. For now, a restored king was hard at work organising his territory into a carefully thought out system of fortifications, mobile armies and land workers. But as Mr Spurrell was setting out his tape measure over the banks and ditches that still remained at Shoebury, he was affected by the same wonderment that touches me. That camp was the centre of a tremendous struggle for power at the end of the ninth century. Like Spurrell, I can imagine the cries of the women and children, the smell of the burning Danish ships. I can feel, too, the anger of a wronged king trying to defend his kingdom in the face of relentless foreign onslaught. These were days when a king’s wishes were a matter of life and death for everyone involved in the working of the kingdom. Throughout this book, the reality of ninth-century warfare should become only too apparent. But who was this remarkable warrior-king and scholar, to whom so many historians in the English-speaking world have paid so much tribute?

Alfred grew up in a politically unstable world, in an age when the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex was competing for supremacy among the heptarchy of kingdoms the Anglo-Saxons had established for themselves. The young Alfred could not have foreseen the great adventure he would ultimately embark upon; could not have imagined he would guide a war-torn people to a position of power and influence in lowland Britain. In the face of a series of potentially devastating foreign military threats, Alfred provided the platform for one of the greatest and most sustained military comebacks of medieval history. This Campaign Chronicle is a tale told looking forwards. Too much has been written about King Alfred over the centuries for any author to present the outcome of his wars as a surprise. But there are always areas for discussion and exploration in an era as obscure as the ninth century, and wherever that opportunity has presented itself, I hope I have taken it.

Alfred the Great is known to modern readers for countless worthy reasons. His political achievements have moved writers from his own times right up to our own, and his political legacy is still with the modern English people in a much-changed and much-threatened world. After his seminal victory at Edington in the spring of 878–the battle around which this book is centred–Alfred was slowly able to realise a vision. He became, in a short time, the ruler not just of Wessex, but of that part of the country which incorporated the English remnants of the kingdom to the north of Wessex–Mercia. Into this enlarged kingdom, which took the name of the ‘Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’, Alfred both imported and grew from within as many clerics, administrators, artists and advisors necessary to run a Christian kingdom. Though far from untroubled by further threats from fresh Danish invasions–and some duplicity from the old (now settled) foes–Alfred found enough time to concentrate on a healthy mixture of good governance and military provision. If the legends promoted in medieval and later times are to be believed, Alfred is the man responsible for the foundation of the Common Law, the establishment of the shires, the trial by jury system, the reordering of his military machine into a three-part system based on fort duties, mobile army service and land maintenance, the strategic building of fortified burhs (all within a day’s march of each other) for the defence of his kingdom, and if all that was not enough, he is generally attributed with founding not just Oxford University, but the Royal Navy to boot.

Outstanding as these accomplishments are, the Campaign Chronicles series is concerned mainly with the military achievements of commanders, outlined in a blow-by-blow format. Here we are able, despite the great length of time passed, to piece together such a military chronicle. We owe the foresight of the king himself for such an approach, since it was he who instigated the recording of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which covers his reign in detail. But there are other contemporary sources. The chronicler, Æthelweard, a tenth-century relative of the king, provides us with fascinating details on Alfred’s campaigns, gleaned, it would seem, from a lost and more detailed version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Meanwhile, Irish, French and Scandinavian sources help paint a colourful picture of the exploits of the Danish armies of the era. In the case of the latter, despite some notoriously colourful story telling, we can glimpse the methodology and the psychology of the Viking.

Within these pages, we will attempt to answer the following questions: how did armies of the period function on the battlefield? How long did they take to assemble and deploy? Were there different types of units for different types of military job? To what use were horses put in these campaigns, which are supposed to have been played out in an era before the adoption of true cavalry in England? How were the warriors equipped, and what were the tactics and strategies that won the day on the battlefields of ninth-century England? We also know Alfred overhauled many military systems for the better, and we will examine how these performed when under the ultimate test.

But this is a chronicle as much about the Danish armies as of the Anglo-Saxon. For years the Danes won the argument, both at a tactical level on the battlefield and at a strategic level in the countryside. The leaders of these Danish forces were responsible for the dismantling of all but one of the English kingdoms they attacked. They were bent on revenge, political domination and settlement, and brought with them the military muscle to back up their demands. To Anglo-Saxon eyes, these terrible and unholy northern warriors were bringing doom to their civilised world. No one had seen hosts of this size–and with this degree of intent–marching across their lands before. The world was changing.

And so, to the Campaign Chronicle itself. But we must start with the background in both England and Denmark. For if we are to understand the actions of Alfred and his great foe, Guthrum the Dane, then we must understand what went before. For therein lay the reasons why the antagonists first locked horns and how they behaved to one another. This much notwithstanding, a word of warning about the historical sources we rely upon is called for. All is not quite as it seems.

Background

Hidden Messages from the Scriptorium

Throughout this book, a number of contemporary and near-contemporary sources are called upon to help us account for what happened during the wars of Alfred the Great. However, the sources most people rely upon in order to construct a narrative are not without their detractors over the years, and one in particular–perhaps the most valuable of them all–has had its authenticity called into question on more than one occasion.

When presenting evidence from these sources in this volume I have tried to read between the lines and explain any bias that I feel is hidden in the original texts, but there always remain some fascinating possibilities, whichever way we look at the stories that have come down to us.

In respect of two of our main sources, we are encumbered by the fact that we are not looking at them in anything like their original form. The tenth-century chronicler Æthelweard, whom we have mentioned above, and Alfred’s biographer Asser, have provided us with material only known to us through the painstaking efforts of antiquarians and conscientious scholars of the early modern era. On Sunday, 23 October 1731, the Cottonian Library at Ashburnham House in Westminster, which housed so many valuable manuscripts variously retrieved after the dissolution of the monasteries, burned to the ground. Among the ashes were the unrecognisable remains of Asser’s Latin Life of King Alfred and Æthelweard’s Latin chronicle. Both authors had drawn heavily on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, initiated by the famous king himself, yet both these writers had significant things to say from their own perspective. In the case of the latter, Æthelweard seems to have worked from his own copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which contained additional information now lost to us. Many other valuable works were destroyed or nearly destroyed in the great fire at Ashburnham House that terrible day, but none so vital to our story as these two.

In the case of Asser, we must understand the nature of the controversy. The man certainly existed. He was discovered by King Alfred at a point in his reign when he was trying to rebuild the spiritual and intellectual life of a ravaged kingdom. He had come from St David’s in Wales and was highly respected. But are we looking at his words when we survey the material we have available to us? Despite the Cottonian blaze, we are lucky in that Matthew Parker, the Archbishop of Canterbury (1559–1575), and the antiquarian, William Camden (1551–1623), who republished Parker’s work in 1602, had both taken Asser’s work and added to it the things they knew from other sources. So, into the story came the famous legend of Alfred burning the cakes and of Oxford University’s claim to have been founded by the great king. To this we must add Francis Wise’s frontispiece of Asser’s Life, which was produced in 1722, and which very few people took notice of at the time.

Given then, that we are looking at Asser’s work removed in time by several hands, it is surprising that so many historians have stuck with the general text of what he appears to say. There are some authentic sounding chimes about what we have: for example, the place names of England are also given in Welsh, consistent with a Welsh bishop who wrote in the knowledge that his countrymen would read his work. But Asser claimed to be a friend of Alfred and yet somehow struggles to get the year of his birth correct, and studiously avoids even giving the name of the king’s wife. This has led some to suggest that the work Parker and Camden so diligently attended was in fact a later Anglo-Saxon forgery by a knowledgeable monk. The controversy will not rest and has been raging for a long time. For us, the material provided for the military aspects of Alfred’s reign is fairly sound, whoever wrote the work. The author clearly used the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as his guide and added some good information to aid the military historian.

As for Æthelweard, his tortured Latin syntax, and his own lineage are commented on as the pages of Alfred’s story are turned in this book. Æthelweard was a fascinating character, whose presence on the stage of English history during the second age of Scandinavian incursions was nothing short of crucial.

But there are other, treacherous, writings. Scandinavian legend is packed with semi-legendary figures who may or may not have existed. Some are impossibly wrapped in legend, although others are far more palpable. Throughout this book, those figures whose actions appear in both legend and history are accounted for. Even some of the wilder flights of Scandinavian fancy are given room. The truth surrounding the motivations of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok, who came to England in 865, may never be known. But what little we do know presents us with a fascinating story.

Lastly, one man deserves mention, but never gets it. Sir John Spelman (1594–1643), son of antiquarian Sir Henry Spelman (c. 1562–1641), is often viewed as one of Alfred’s first early modern biographers. There is nothing particularly new in his work when we read it with the eye of a modern historian, but his words are often beautifully chosen. For that reason alone, I have included some material from his Latin work on the Life of Alfred the Great, which was translated into English with copious footnotes by Thomas Hearne in 1709.

For now, we must peer through the burning flames of Ashburnham House, to re-emerge hundreds of years earlier and step out of the hearth fires of Anglo-Saxon England, to examine what it was that made Alfred’s world so vulnerable to the pagans from overseas.

Of Dynasties and Power

The English kingdoms the Danes ultimately dismembered all had a fault line running down the middle of them. Wessex, the sole survivor, was no exception. The dynamic behind early medieval government was based around kinship, and in England, as well as elsewhere, the Germanic notion of the bond of lordship was the glue that stuck the social hierarchy together, and which, in theory, cemented the chief kinsman (or ‘cyninge’) to his throne. But here in England another factor was at work. It made its presence felt most keenly at succession time, when the power of one king was transferred to another. This was the witan.

An Anglo-Saxon witan was a council of wise men to whom the king would regularly turn for advice. It consisted of leading churchmen and secular lords, whose greatest collective power was in their ability to elect the successor to the king. Moreover, they could–as the West Saxon witan had done in 757–deselect a king, too.

The ties of kinship could be divisive where there were competing families vying for the throne. In England there was nearly always a dynastic alternative to the incumbent. Put simply, if you were king, the secret to long-term success–over and above the destruction of your enemies and the successful protection of your people–was to stay in power long enough to secure succession, either for your son or your chosen heir. For this you will have to have played a masterful game of diplomacy with the witan. When kings obtained this right, and power did indeed pass from father to son or from brother to brother, the result was an accumulation of power, based on the expansion of the lordship ties that made everything work. But it was not until the tenth century, and the reigns of Alfred’s son and grandsons in a greatly changed England, that this ideal became anything like a reality. While the tenth century proved that kinship could be a strength if managed properly, a great part of the ninth century proved the opposite. If you were the political enemy of an Anglo-Saxon king, all you had to do–but it was no easy task–was exploit the dynastic tensions at court and within the witan. This you could only do with the credible threat of force and as much intrigue as you could solicit. The Vikings were supreme masters at it, and we will explore how they did this to kingdom after kingdom. Perhaps it is worthwhile, however, to ask ourselves the one question that seems to have evaded many people over the years, and that is the question of who, exactly, the Vikings really were.

The Phenomenon of the Viking

To the churchmen of Europe they were the living embodiment of the prophecy of Jeremiah. It had been said that cruel men would rage out of the northern seas and visit harm on good people. With their bows and lances they would show no mercy. But in reality, the Scandinavians who plagued the kingdoms of the west in the eighth and ninth centuries were not so much a Divine punishment, as a mortal phenomenon resulting from certain political and social factors.

The word we use to describe these people is one shrouded in mystery, as arguments have raged over exactly what a Viking is. It was mooted by some scholars that the word might simply mean ‘oarsman’, and may be derived from a Scandinavian word used to describe the distance covered in an oarsman’s shift. Others have suggested the word is derived from either the Old English, or closely related Old Frisian, word for a trading settlement or ‘wic’. Such vulnerable coastal settlements were particularly popular with the raiders in the early years of the Viking era.

The Scandinavians themselves had a name for the marauders of the northern world, too. Their word ‘Vikingr’ meant ‘Vik dweller’, an inhabitant of the Viken area around the Oslo fjord in Norway. But it seems the word quickly took on the meaning of ‘pirate’ and was used to describe anyone who stepped outside mainstream society and decided to embark on a life of political opportunism and foreign adventure. In fact, the word ‘wicenga’ meant just that. You did not have to be a Dane or a Norwegian to be a pirate. But the Dane won the argument. Sir John Spelman, Alfred’s first real biographer of the modern age, put it quite succinctly, set out here courtesy of Thomas Hearne’s 1709 translation of his original Latin work:

And therefore from the Baltic Sea and other Maritime parts thereof so plentifully disburthened her self as that in England, as in the western parts of France and Spain. The Countries to the coasts lay almost waste, by reason of the frequent incursions of